Images of geographic areas created on a local basis have been created in numerous formats. Photographs, movie cameras, video camera recorders, and more recently digital recorders have all been utilized to capture moving images of a geographic parcel. Photographs can be useful because they are easily associated with a particular real estate parcel, however they are limited in the scope of the subject matter that they can include. In addition, photographs must be manually acquired and docketed in order to be associated with a property and subsequently retrieved. Panoramas can increase the scope of the subject matter to a point, but are limited by a point of capture of the panoramic views.
Movie pictures, video recorders and digital recorders and other “motion pictures” provide for increased scope of image capture. However, it is sometimes difficult to locate and view a particular portion of interest of images captured as motion pictures. In addition, correlation of particular portions of a motion picture with a particular real estate parcel can be difficult if the motion picture includes more than one real estate parcel. For example, it is relatively difficult to locate and view a particular real estate parcel in the context of its neighborhood setting, or particular aspects of its setting. Aerial images, such as satellite pictures of geographic areas have also been captured and specific parcels of land or landmarks can be located on the aerial images.
In addition, methods and apparatus have been known for generating point clouds and generating representations of particular objects from processing of the point clouds.
However, prior to the present invention, there has not been a mechanism for generating a continuum of object representations based upon point cloud data.